Trovador Tom Corbett Spacemen from Argentina

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Brian..

Brian..

This set appeared for sale recently. The seller claimed they were Argentinian Tom Corbett spacemen by Trovador. They certainly have that concertina effect on the knees and elbows, but I don't recognise the poses.

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ejpetrie

ejpetrie

Brian, as with a number of these Argentinian "finds" these are copied directly from some of the 45mm poses found in the early Marx Tom Corbett playsets. The more common South American Tom Corbett figure copies turn up as hand-painted lead castings taken directly from the playset figures. But these guys are even more poorly made, less distinct, and even altered to some degree. The identical green and yellow figures seem to be based on the pose with the microphone from the (commonly found in grey) Cadet group, obviously done here without the microphone or facial details and with some interesting added spacesuit touches (since the Cadet group poses appear in their regular uniforms, not their spacesuits). The blue female figure is very close to the original "Walking Woman in Spacesuit" pose that is part of the (commonly found in blue) Cadets in Space Suits figure group (that some collectors still incorrectly refer to as the "Rex Mars" figure group). The blue figure walking with a device in his left hand is based upon the (commonly found in blue) Mercurian walking with a hypno-device from that same Cadets in Space Suits figure group. Most of this distortion is because of the cheap mold-making techniques used by the early South American plastics companies, casting from existing U. S. production pieces to which they had applied enlarged bases of their own design before creating their mold's master positives.